Page:Correspondence between the Warden of St Columba's College and the Primate of Armagh.djvu/21

 that your name was placed on the Committee; yet, so far from having taken care to let this be known, a letter of yours to the Rev. R. S. Brooke, (which at your desire was shown to me, and which bears the same date as your letter to the Rev. C. A. Fowler,) assures him that your signature was attached to the document to which he alluded, by your authority,—that document (the only document in which your name appeared before the public) being the list of the Committee.

Had you immediately on the publication of your name, written directions to withdraw it, and publicly stated the reasons which induced you to abstain from acting on that Committee, namely, that you could not permit it to be inferred that you were one of the party whose leaders occupy the foremost place in this movement, your motives would not then have been liable to be misconstrued, and the ill effects of the publication of your name would have been obviated, and the fact that you had, as an individual, published your sentiments respecting Bishop Gobat, would have secured you from a charge of "cowardice" in declining to take a leading part in the present instance, should any one have been disposed to prefer such a charge against you.

You seem to think that because you stated your opinion of Bishop Gobat's conduct in the second volume of your work published in 1850, I therefore ought to have anticipated that you would join in the Memorial now in circulation. I confess, however,